Zelophehad’s Daughters2016-12-06T17:25:02Zhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/feed/atom/Ziffhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119432016-12-06T17:25:02Z2016-12-06T17:19:39ZContinue reading →]]>I love Christmas carols. In a typical year, I start listening to Christmas music by October at the latest, just to make sure I can be sure to enjoy it fully by the time Christmas actually rolls around. So it makes me sad that we have space for only 14 Christmas hymns in our hymnal. It’s not a big surprise, given that it’s not a lengthy hymnal1 to begin with, but it’s still unfortunate.

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to consider which of the 14 I might be willing to give up, and which ones I might like to add to take their place. Perhaps I’ll even think of an extra few to add in case we one day get a super-sized hymnal.

Joy to the World
Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful
Angels We Have Heard on High
Silent Night
Once in Royal David’s City
Away in a Manger
It Came upon the Midnight Clear
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
With Wondering Awe
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains
The First Noel
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

This isn’t adding or removing entire hymns, but I would be happy if we could sing “Heaven and nature sing” in “Joy to the World” instead of “Saint and angels sing.” When I was growing up, I remember hearing my mother complain that the Mormon version sounds overly exclusive, and I think she’s spot on. “Heaven and nature” sounds vast; “Saints and angels” sounds like a little club of self-satisfied people patting each other on the back for being more righteous than everyone else.

But as far as whole hymns go, I could stand to drop “Once in Royal David’s City.” I haven’t heard that much outside a Mormon context, so it doesn’t really signal Christmas to me. Ditto for “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” It expresses a great sentiment, but the music isn’t that interesting, and I only ever hear it at church. I know that “Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains” is a Mormon hymn, so of course it should also be tossed by this criterion, but I have a soft spot for it because I remember singing it a lot for primary Christmas programs as a kid.

Most of the rest, I love. “The First Noel” is one of my favorites. Also “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” although it would be nice if we could clean up some of the gender exclusive language (“Born to raise the sons of earth”? No thanks.). Even the ones where I’m not particularly taken with the music itself, like “Silent Night,” are so associated with Christmas in my mind that I love them anyway.

Here are some Christmas carols that I wish we could add to our hymnal:

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Good Christian Men Rejoice
I Wonder As I Wander
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
Were You There on That Christmas Night?

I am particularly fond of the melancholy and contemplative tone of “I Wonder As I Wander,” and the longing of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Even if whoever selected hymns didn’t like these two, though, because they’re outside the norm of what we expect for Christmas hymns, I think the first two would fit perfectly in an all-upbeat mold.

1. The 341 hymns in our hymnal pale in comparison to, for example, the five most popular hymnals on hymnary.org, all of which have at least 600 hymns.

]]>20Ziffhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119222016-11-21T16:14:39Z2016-11-21T16:14:39ZContinue reading →]]>A lot of discussion around US Presidential elections concerns what types of justices a candidate might appoint to the Supreme Court. This is of course particularly an issue when, as is the case now, some of the justices are quite old. It occurred to me that although it’s not exactly the same thing, a related Mormon question is how many new Q15 members future Church Presidents are expected to call.

To look at this question, I ran a simulation similar to others I’ve run in the past couple of years to see how likely it is that each current Q15 member will become President. I used the same method, including the same mortality table, that I’ve used for the previous simulations. One difference this time, though, is that I had to account for mortality rates of new Q15 members. When I’ve done simulations before just looking at who will become President, it hasn’t mattered how long the new members will live, because they’re all junior to all the existing members. But now, when I want to look at how many new members each President calls, how long new Q15 members live is crucial to the simulation, so I had to include it.

To add simulated new members to the quorum, whenever one member died in a simulation, I picked a new member who was between 51 and 69 years old (covering the entering ages of new members since Elder Oaks). I made the distribution uniform, meaning that a simulated new member had equal probability of falling at any point in the range, as this appears to match the actual distribution of age at entry fairly well.

Other than this addition, though, the simulations look very much like the ones I’ve run before. In each simulation, if a Q15 member outlives all members senior to him, he becomes President. If he becomes President, he always gets to call at least one new member (as he has to replace the Church President whose place he is taking), and then he is also counted as calling new Q15 members to replace any who die during his tenure. All calculations of ages and life expectancies are rounded to the nearest year. This ignores complicated situations that might occasionally arise, like a Q15 member dying, and then the Church President himself dying before he can replace the other Q15 member, leaving a new Church President to call two new members right off the bat. I think the rounding probably averages out okay across these types of results, and works fine for the more typical situations where members die and are replaced in an orderly fashion.

I ran one million simulations. Here are the results. Note that President Monson’s count doesn’t include the five Q15 members he has already called (Elders Christofferson, Andersen, Rasband, Stevenson, and Renlund), but only future Q15 members he might call.

Member

Age (end 2016)

Prob president

If president . . .

Avg yrs

Avg new Q15 called

Monson

89

1.00

4.8

3.3

Nelson

92

0.37

3.8

2.9

Oaks

84

0.52

5.6

3.6

Ballard

88

0.21

3.9

2.6

Hales

84

0.29

4.6

2.8

Holland

76

0.53

6.8

3.8

Eyring

83

0.14

4.0

2.4

Uchtdorf

76

0.33

5.6

3.1

Bednar

64

0.69

9.9

5.5

Cook

76

0.09

4.3

2.6

Christofferson

71

0.18

5.1

3.1

Andersen

65

0.34

6.4

3.7

Rasband

65

0.25

5.6

3.3

Stevenson

61

0.34

6.2

3.5

Renlund

64

0.16

4.8

2.8

The probabilities of becoming President are similar to what we’ve seen before. Elders Oaks, Holland, and (especially) Bednar have a good shot at becoming President. At the other end, Elder Cook is quite unlikely to make it.

The number of new members each man might call as President is strongly correlated with his expected length of service as President. For example, Elder Bednar is expected to serve about a decade if he becomes President, and to call more than five new members. Elder Ballard, on the other hand, is expected to serve four years if he reaches the Presidency, and call fewer than three new members. This correlation is expected: length of service as President is a function of being young relative to members senior to you, and number of new members called is a function of being young relative to members junior to you. Both boil down to being young relative to the rest of the quorum.

For comparison, here are the numbers of Q15 members called by each past Church President:

Joseph Smith

22

Brigham Young

13

John Taylor

6

Wilford Woodruff

5

Lorenzo Snow

2

Joseph F. Smith

11

Heber J. Grant

12

George Albert Smith

3

David O. McKay

11

Joseph Fielding Smith

2

Harold B. Lee

1

Spencer W. Kimball

7

Ezra Taft Benson

3

Howard W. Hunter

1

Gordon B. Hinckley

4

Thomas S. Monson

5

It’s not surprising that Joseph Smith holds the record, given that he called the entire original quorum, plus he was always quick to rearrange things, using excommunication if necessary, in ways that none of his successors have been. I think it’s also interesting how varied the numbers are. President Kimball and President Hinckley ran the Church for similar lengths of time, but Kimball called seven new members while Hinckley only called four, because Hinckley presided during a time when very few quorum members died. It’s also interesting just how many new members some Church Presidents have called. Both Heber J. Grant and David O. McKay presided over quorums made up almost entirely of men they had called, by the time they died. Although of course, particularly when a President is unwell in his final years, others close to him are likely affecting the process too.

In any case, even with an estimated three new members to call ahead of him, President Monson wouldn’t even come close to the record since Joseph Smith, or even the record since the turn of the 20th century. None of the other Q15 members are expected to either, although of course there were some simulations in which Elder Bednar calls 12 new members or something. Stranger things have happened.

]]>4Ziffhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119292016-11-17T03:00:44Z2016-11-17T03:00:30ZContinue reading →]]>The United States elected Donald Trump as its next President last week. This event hit me in a similar way to the Church’s (forced) announcement of the exclusion policy last November. It’s not just that they were both surprising, although they definitely were that. I followed the election forecast and betting sites, and I believed them when they said it was most likely that Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton. As far as the exclusion policy goes, I definitely did not see it coming. Lacking a top-sacred clearance, I didn’t have any idea of what the Q15 might be considering in their meetings.

The major similarity is that both go against what I see as the fundamental principles of their organizations.

In the Church, I always held to the idea that love was a core principle, as well as the belief that God is no respector of persons. The exclusion policy feels to me like it violates these core principles in a cynical attempt to keep Church members from becoming too accepting of gay people. It suggests that what I thought of as a peripheral issue—sexual orientation—is actually a core issue for the Church. Similarly, as an American, I have thought that some of our core ideals were expressed in statements such as “all men are created equal,” “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The election of Trump, who sympathizes with white supremacists, who clearly doesn’t believe in religious freedom, and who spews vitriol toward immigrants, seems to elevate not just peripheral ideals, but what I think of as anti-ideals, like arrogance, willful ignorance, sexism, and intolerance, over ideals like equal treatment, tolerance, religious freedom, and being welcoming to immigrants.

Of course I’m not saying that either the Church or the United States always lives up to these ideals that I feel like the exclusion policy and Trump violate. Far from it. But these ideals are still crucial in telling us what we are hoping and working toward. For example, after invading Afghanistan, George W. Bush at least had the decency to say “Our war is not against Islam.” At the time, I recall being frustrated that, given his actions, I felt like he didn’t mean it. But in retrospect, I’m grateful that he at least nodded toward the ideal of religious tolerance and didn’t paint an entire (huge!) religion with a broad brush. Trump, on the other hand, has no interest in this ideal. He hates (or is at the very least suspicious of) all Muslims. He thinks they’re all terrorists until proven otherwise.

It depresses me to think that I’m in the minority now in both my church and my country in what I see as core ideals. The hope I hold out is that neither the ideals of the Church nor the United States are fixed or inevitable, and with some advocacy, it’s possible they could move in a better direction.

]]>22Lynnettehttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119362016-11-11T16:52:21Z2016-11-11T16:52:21ZContinue reading →]]>Like many of you, I was devastated by the results of this election. Devastated in a way that I never have been, even when the person I voted for lost, even when I had serious concerns about what the winner would do. I’ve never been through an election like this.

It’s probably not entirely fair of me, but I have to admit that I felt particularly betrayed by the Mormon vote for Trump. I’ve been thinking about why that is. And the reality is that I bought into the narrative being promulgated for a while that Mormons were different, that we, unlike evangelicals, were going to put commitment to religious values above commitment to party. I gobbled up that narrative. I loved it. I explained to non-LDS friends with pride about Mormons defying the national trend of Republicans, who were unifying behind their morally reprehensible candidate.

When I think about that now, I feel a bit gullible, honestly. And surprised at myself. I learned in Primary that Mormons were special, were different from other people. We could even be recognized by our unique glow. But I’d utterly rejected that idea by the time I was a young adult. We’re just people, it turns out, like other people, with some amazing attributes and some real flaws.

But then I fell for all the happy stories about Mormons denouncing Trump. Because the reasons they gave seemed plausible—he’s certainly no practitioner of the traditional sexual morality that Mormons prize so dearly, Mormons are more moderate on immigration, as a religious minority with a history of persecution we have a special care for other religious minorities, and so forth. Not to mention that those who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton even had another option in Evan McMullin.

And then—the election. I know someone is going to point out that he didn’t do as well as Romney among Mormons, but honestly, given the level of support he got, that doesn’t make it feel any better. To be fair, my very impressionistic observation based on watching my conservative Mormon friends is that they largely felt like they had no good options, and weren’t necessarily endorsing his bigotry and his many less savory qualities.

But it still hurts. It’s hard to accept that among my people, sexual assault, misogyny, racism, hostility toward many vulnerable populations, threats to Muslims, and so many other things weren’t dealbreakers. It makes all that talk of being a light to the world and examples of strong moral values ring a bit hollow.

It’s always nice to hear how the old folks at home are doing. It seems like we’ve been hearing more and more about Them recently.

Back in April 2013, Ziff (http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2013/04/29/heavenly-parents-are-we-really-talking-about-you-more/ and references therein) noted that there seemed to be an increasing number of references to “Heavenly Parents” in General Conference and more widely in church materials. This post discusses three aspects of that trend: 1) It has not only continued but accelerated over the last three years, 2) there has been a shift in which authorities are mentioning Them, and 3) the fraught issue of capitalization.

An accelerating trend

Few speakers mentioned Heavenly Parents in the decades before 1995, with an average of 0.48 references per year (that’s both April and October conferences combined). That all changed with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”, which affirms in its third sentence that each human being is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents”, triggering seven references to Heavenly Parents that year. In the years 1996-2012, references to “Heavenly Parents” nearly tripled to 1.41 references per year (p=0.0057), but never more than three in any one year. 2013 saw a spike to a record nine references, followed by a fall back to one reference in 2014, a return to nine references in 2015, and finally a grand total of 15 references this year. Exactly half of the 56 talks that mention Heavenly Parents have been delivered in the last four years.

Can you get a number that high just by luck? It is very unlikely. The counts from 1974-2012 are statistically indistinguishable from a geometric distribution with a mean of 1.05 (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, p=0.258). The expected wait time to get 15 from such a distribution is 44,000 years. Clearly, something new is going on.

Who’s talking about Them?

There has been a remarkable shift in the speakers who are discussing Heavenly Parents. At first glance, the leaderboard seems dominated by conservatives:

SPEAKER

REFERENCES

Dallin H. Oaks

7

M. Russell Ballard

7

Boyd K. Packer

6

Carole M. Stephens

6

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

5

Russell M. Nelson

5

(6 speakers)

2

However this is slightly misleading. Seventeen of the twenty-five references by Oaks, Ballard, Packer, and Nelson occurred prior to the 2013 surge, while 9 of the 11 references from Stephens and Uchtdorf happened in the surge, which also included progressive talks by Renlund, Hallstrom, and Marriott. It is worth noting that Oct 2015 and Apr 2016 marked the only two times since Hinckley’s 1993 quasi-denunciation of publically discussing Heavenly Mother that she has been referenced in General Conference (by Jeffery R. Holland and the aforementioned Neill Marriott, respectively).

Of course, the FamProc has had a wide influence in LDS rhetoric since 1995. Speakers have referred to the document explicitly 230 times since 1995, or 147% more than the most used verse of scripture over that time period (Moses 1:39), and also more than 1,562 of the 1,582 chapters in the LDS standard works. Unsurprisingly, references to Heavenly Parents and the FamProc co-occur frequently: of the 1,340 talks given between Oct 1995 and the end of 2012, 8.5% (134) mention the FamProc, 3.5% (56) mention Heavenly Parents, and 1.7% (27) mention both, though one would expect only 0.3% (4.75) by chance (p<.0001). Put another way, of the 3.5% of talks that mention Heavenly Parents, 48% (not the expected 8.5%) also mention the FamProc. Conversely, 20% of the FamProc talks mention Heavenly Parents.

However, like the conservative to liberal shift noted above, the FamProc – HP welding is on the decline. Since 2013, FamProc references rose to 9.3% of talks, but HP talks shot up to 10.4%, and talks mentioning both went up to 4.1% above an expected 0.97%. This represents a decline from 7.0x to 4.6x above null expectations, and a decrease in the chi-squared value of 85 to 32.

Capitalization

There is some debate among the leading English grammar guides (MLA, Chicago, AP) about when to capitalize God, titles referring to God, and pronouns referring to God. The LDS church put out its own style guide to resolve these vital issues, currently 100 pages long and in its fourth edition. Chapter 8 of this guide deals with capitalization, and while the first three overarching guidelines all quote The Chicago Manual of Style, as well as 8.29 regarding names of God, the LDS church breaks with Chicago to insist on capitalizing pronouns (8.31). Lavina Fielding Anderson, erstwhile editor of the Ensign, claims this is a direct result of Boyd K. Packer insisting on publishing all of his talks in this non-standard way. Similarly, she traces the Church’s insistence on using the archaic (capitalized) pronouns “Thou” and “Thee” in prayers to Bruce R. McConkie’s insistence that their use demonstrates formality and respect, despite the uncontested fact that they were traditionally informal pronouns used among intimate friends in English (and almost every other European language).

Thus, the LDS church has an unusual and decades-old tradition of using capitalization to signal respect for divinity. This respect, unsurprisingly, is not extended to non-Christian deities (rule 8.33) or “heavenly beings other than members of the Godhead” (rule 8.35); but shockingly this specifically excludes “heavenly parents” (ibid) who are apparently in the same class as “the destroying angel”. Consider that capitalization is so important that rule 8.29 lists no fewer than 57 examples of names or titles of God which must be capitalized, as soon as he (or rather He, sensu Packer) is paired with a Heavenly Mother, that respect no longer needs to be proffered.

The guide, which offers 61 capitalization rules and hundreds of examples, is uncharacteristically silent about whether Heavenly Mother requires capitalization or not. Rule 8.27, however, provides the example that when a woman is referred to by her kinship than it should be capitalized, as in “I received a letter from Mother.”

Despite these published rules, “Heavenly Parents” was capitalized in seven instances in October 2016; Uchtdorf is the only conference speaker to use the construction “Parents in Heaven” in talks available at lds.org, and capitalized it. Prior to October 2016, the only speaker to break this rule was (who else) Sister Chieko Okazaki in October 1994.

The Point

So: Heavenly Parents are being discussed more frequently, more often by the less conservative leaders, more often without reference to the FamProc, and apparently are now being extended the same typographical courtesy the Heavenly Father has been receiving since the 1960s.

Other writers have worried including Heavenly Mother more broadly in LDS theology and ritual under this leadership might do more harm than good. Some have pointed out that the arguments for Heavenly Mother are similar to the arguments against gay marriage (e.g., http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2015/10/24/heavenly-mother-and-gay-marriage/). Marina and I have pushed back against this opinion (“Why I Don’t Need Heavenly Mother”, Sunstone 2015, https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/audio/SL15224.mp3). We agree that claiming women—even Divine Women—are fundamentally different in essential ways from men is a dangerous move, and one that the current leadership would almost certainly take if forced to. However, there are excellent reasons for a more gender-inclusive theology that don’t rely on complementarianism or gender essentialism. The second-wave feminist argument (women’s unique feminine abilities and predilections mandate they have a voice in representative organizations) is not an ideal way forward. The third-wave feminist argument (that men, women, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals are only superficially different, and should be able to agree on fundamental religious issues) seems like a stronger position as the Church makes the leap from monochromatic and parochial to pluralistic and global. The analysis above suggests that the church is already evolving slowly (but evolution is always slow) towards a more enlightened position on these topics. But it is still early days; where it ends up only time will tell.

]]>12Ziffhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119182016-10-12T03:57:02Z2016-10-12T03:51:13ZContinue reading →]]>Just as God worked in the past through King David in spite of his sexual impropriety, he works in our day through imperfect leaders such as Donald Trump. And just as David wrote many psalms in his remorse and repentance, so also has Donald Trump begun to write psalms. This is his first attempt.

I am my own shepherd; I shall not want.

I lie down in all the greenest pastures, and go by the most tremendous still waters. The very best.

I restore my soul bigly. I grab all the most beautiful women, for the sake of respect. Nobody respects women like I do.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of taxes, I will fear no filing: for carry-forward deductions are with me; my accountants and lawyers they comfort me.

“To man, woman is the dearest creature on earth, and there is no extreme to which he would not go for his mother or sister.” – J. B. Sanford, anti-suffrage Senator, 1911.

The woman asking for the vote, though? She’s so dear she should be arrested, beaten, and force-fed in prison.

****

Real women have curves.

Any women without curves? A fake. Ignore her.

***

Women are too precious to work outside the home, and far too delicate to undertake the difficult tasks that men do.

Except, of course, for African-American or poor women. They don’t count.

***

Patriarchal systems thrive on divisions between people, particularly women: a good woman deserves respect and protection and praise and all the glorious constraints of the pedestal. Any woman who steps outside those expectations, though–by not being attractive enough, by asking for things, by being too mouthy, by not being white or middle class, by having too many children or too few children or no children at all, by violating any standard that exists in anyone’s head–can be rejected, shamed, abused, or, at best, ignored. They’re not real women, after all.

***

And now, consider these statements:

“They [LDS women] stand strong and immovable in faith, in family, and in relief.” [“Women in the Church”, lds.org]

They [Latter-day Saint women] believe that by divine design, women and men experience the most growth, joy and fulfillment together, not in isolation. [“Women in the Church”, mormon.org]

“Idon’tthinkwomenareaftertheauthority.Ithinkthey’reaftertheblessings,andare happythattheycanaccesstheblessingsandpowerofthepriesthood…They’rehappytoletsomeoneelseholdtheumbrella,becausewehave different,complementaryroles,andarehappywiththat. [President Linda K. Burton, in a 2013 conversation with other female Church leaders.]

“The women of the Church are not complaining about it [not having the priesthood.] They have a strong organization, a very strong organization, with 4 million-plus members. I don’t know of another women’s organization in the world which does so much for women as does this Church. They are happy.” [President Gordon B. Hinckley, in a 1998 Larry King interview.]

All of these statements seem innocuous, but they’re still playing the patriarchal definition game: Mormon women, by the descriptive assertions here, don’t have doubts. They love families. They’re straight, and probably married. They’re happy. They don’t complain. They. are. happy.

This kind of rhetoric divides, even if none of the speakers explicitly intend to do so. Still, there’s an implicit framework here: the (idealistic) description of a “Mormon woman” draws a boundary around some women, our women, who are acceptable, and, in so doing, asserts that some other women, those who don’t meet the description, those that have doubts, or aren’t straight, or, worst of all, complain about not having the priesthood, don’t qualify for the label.

I’m certainly not the stereotypical Mormon woman–is anyone?– but I care about being a Mormon, and a woman, and a Mormon woman. And yet, every time I read or hear that kind of statement from fellow Mormons, intentional or not, that identity shrinks a little bit, chipped away at by those who would rather pretend I don’t exist. It feels…well, the best word is probably lonely. It’s a reminder, however subtle, that I, and those like me, have lost the in vs. out boundary game, and have failed to be “real” Mormon women. With definitions like these, we are outsiders, safely ignored or insulted.

A response on the Facebook event page for Wear Pants to Church Day, 2012.

The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2007 to bring together LDS graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship. During the past five conferences, students have shared their experiences in the church and the academy and the new ideas that have emerged as a result. Papers and conversations provided thought-provoking historical, exegetical, and theoretical insights and compelling models of how to reconcile one’s discipleship with scholarly discipline.

In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students and early career scholars in religious studies and related disciplines (e.g., women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, etc.) to join the conversation. We welcome proposals addressing historical, exegetical, and theoretical issues that arise from the intersections of LDS religious experience and academic scholarship. Final papers presented at the conference should be brief, pointed comments of ten to fifteen minutes. Please visit faithandknowledge.org for more information on themes and topics explored at previous years’ conferences.

Proposals should include a paper abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief CV. Please submit proposals by December 2, 2016 to Christopher Jones at chrisjones13@gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent by December 16, 2016.

The registration fee will be $25 for graduate students and $50 for early career scholars. For individuals whose paper proposals are accepted, hotel accommodations for two nights and all meals on Saturday will be provided; travel expenses will be reimbursed based on a sliding scale.

Further information will be posted on the website faithandknowledge.org.

]]>0Petrahttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=119072016-09-26T00:16:50Z2016-09-26T00:16:11ZContinue reading →]]>First disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review.

Second disclaimer: I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said on the Internetalready, but that’s never stopped me before and it won’t stop me now.

Like Girls Who Chose God, the last collaboration from McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding, Our Heavenly Family, Our Earthly Families is a statement of How We Could Be Different: it quotes both male and female church leaders in roughly equal measure; it talks openly about both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother; it eschews broad stereotypes of parental roles; it features stunning artwork; and yet it still teaches core doctrine without even the smallest hint of heresy.

In short, I’d love it if this book were next year’s Primary manual, and embedded in that is my only critique: as light and fun the authors try to keep the prose–with families, you can build forts, read stories, have snowball fights, go to operas, and even take up zydeco dancing–the book is explicitly didactic, and as such reads slightly more like a manual written for adults on how to talk to their children about families, rather than a text meant to engage young children directly. (I’m no child development expert, but I have a hard time imagining myself sitting down to read a child a story about how “Here on Earth, we can hold family councils too”, and an even harder time imagining that child sitting still for it.) Even some of the discussion questions, while a great way to make the book more interactive for younger readers, ring a little bit too much like the anodyne discussion starters in a Church manual. (“Why do we need both our spirits and our bodies?”)

Still, though, this is the kind of book I want to have around, so I can bask in the warm glow of its peaceful artwork or optimistic vision of families. This is a book, too, that Church members across the map of orthodoxy can connect to, and as such it’s probably even more important for adults than for the children in their lives, for the way it models a vision of an inclusive and affirming rhetoric of the importance of families and family life. Even better, the fact that it’s published by Deseret Book is enough to kindle a little bit of hope that someday, with enough faith and prayer and love and positive reinforcement to efforts like this, We Could Be Different.

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0Ziffhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.comhttp://zelophehadsdaughters.com/?p=118982016-09-18T03:32:13Z2016-09-18T03:32:13ZContinue reading →]]>Michael Austin has a great post up at BCC about how small a percentage of the faculty at the BYUs are women, and what a bad message this sends to students, both female and male. I thought it might be interesting to look at the IPEDS data he used in graphical form.

Here’s a scatterplot showing each institution’s percentage of faculty who are women as a function of total faculty size.

It looks like the smaller institutions are much more variable, but as they get larger, they cluster much more tightly around a percentage of about 40. I’ve highlighted the BYUs in the bottom left. BYU-Provo is particularly an outlier considering its size. It has 1236 total faculty and 20% women. To find another institution with a lower percentage, you have to go all the way down to the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with 19% and 413 total faculty. BYU-Idaho is even more dramatically different from similar-sized institutions. It has 541 total faculty and 12% women. To find another institution with a lower percentage, you have to go all the way down to Musicians Institute, with 104 total faculty and 11% women. BYU-Hawaii, with 130 faculty and 15% women, isn’t the most extreme among similarly-sized institutions like the other BYUs are, but it’s clearly at the low end.

To look at this comparison a little more closely, I made a histogram for each BYU to compare it to institutions with similar total faculty counts. Here’s BYU-Provo compared to institutions with 1000-1499 total faculty.

Note that the percentages along the bottom are the middles of the bins, so BYU-Provo falls into the 20 to less than 22% bin (labeled “21%” because it is the midpoint). These are relatively large institutions, so like you can see with the scatterplot, most fall near 40%. BYU-Provo has the lowest percentage.

Here’s BYU-Idaho compared to institutions with 400-599 faculty. Note that because there are more institutions, I chose a narrower range to compare it to.

Again, it’s clear that BYU-Idaho is even more of an outlier than BYU-Provo is.

BYU-Hawaii is only one of two institutions represented by the 15% bar, but I couldn’t figure out a way to color just half the bar.

I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t already been said better in Michael’s original post, or in Kristine A.’s excellent related post at Wheat and Tares, or in some great comments on both posts. Like I said, I just thought these graphs might be interesting to look at.